Bailey Aldrich (April 23, 1907 – September 25, 2002) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and previously was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Education and career A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Aldrich graduated from Harvard University with an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1928 and Harvard Law School with a Bachelor of Laws in 1932. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1954. Aldrich was in private practice in Boston from 1932 to 1954. Federal judicial service Aldrich was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 1, 1954, to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, to a new seat authorized by 68 Stat. 8. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 23, 1954, and received his commission on April 27, 1954. His service terminated on September 14, 1959, due to his elevation to the First Circuit. Aldrich was nominated by President Eisenhower on February 26, 1959, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated by Judge Calvert Magruder. He was confirmed by the Senate on September 9, 1959, and received his commission the next day. He served as Chief Judge and as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1965 to 1972. He assumed senior status on August 31, 1972. His service terminated on September 25, 2002, due to his death in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Conflict with Senator McCarthy According to Ted Morgan in Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, Judge Aldrich drew the ire of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1955, when Aldrich dismissed contempt of Congress charges against Leon J. Kamin. In February 1956, McCarthy wrote to complain to President Eisenhower, accusing Judge Aldrich of harboring sympathy toward Communists. He had learned from the New Bedford Standard-Times that Aldrich had initially refused, on principle, to sign a non-Communist affidavit card upon his appointment as a trustee to the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital. Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter had nominated him for the trusteeship on August 2, 1955, two months before the Kamin trial. According to Morgan, the judge wrote that he "would rather forgo the post on the hospital board than sign the card." He finally did sign the card on September 13, "after being told